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SIX

Killian

The engine purred—too smooth, too quiet for how loud my head was screaming.

I gripped the leather-bound steering wheel of the Audi as though it was the only thing anchoring me to the here and now.

Everything about the car was a study in precision.

Heated seats, perfect stitching on cream leather, digital console glowing like a goddamn cockpit. It was sleek, powerful, and expensive.

It was proof. Of who I’d become and what I’d survived.

And still, my breath hitched. I’d worked for Lassiter once, and had never suspected he was anything but an overzealous federal prosecutor. How could we not have known ?

I didn’t remember pulling away from Redcars.

The drive blurred past me, as if I’d been on autopilot.

What jolted me back to the present was the crunch of tires over cracked concrete, the kind that hadn’t seen a repair crew in over a decade.

I eased the car to a stop and looked around.

A ruined Blockbuster with boarded-up windows had a placard on the fence declaring it part of a regeneration project, as if that somehow made it less dead.

I left the engine running. The warmth from the heated seats coiled around my spine, but it couldn’t touch the chill in my chest. I was a block of ice. Frozen from the inside out.

What Robbie had revealed back at Redcars cracked something open in me. I hadn’t seen it coming. Didn’t want to feel it. But his words had burrowed in, slow and merciless. And now, they were dragging memories up from places I’d locked tight.

The way some clients smiled, as if they owned me, the second the money hit.

Tuition didn’t pay itself. Rent didn’t wait.

Groceries didn’t appear like magic. The right connections wouldn’t happen if the people I tried to ingratiate myself with knew there was a street rat with a past sitting opposite them.

I’d never been ashamed of the sex.

But there were names that I’d never say out loud— men who wanted silence and who paid for obedience but didn’t want a person, just a thing. And I’d given them what they wanted. I smiled through it. Played the game. Got what I needed even if it left scars. Some shallow. Some still bleeding inside.

My hands tightened on the wheel. I was shaking.

“Stop it,” I muttered, low and sharp.

I forced my eyes shut and breathed deep. Made myself think of something else— someone else.

Jamie.

Beautiful, infuriating Jamie. All edges and heat and danger.

He made me want things. There was something magnetic about how Jamie thought—no grey, no compromise—and a razor-sharp conviction that bad people deserved bad endings, especially if it meant shielding the ones he cared about.

It was brutal, maybe, but honest. Clean. And God, I envied that clarity.

I exhaled. Still shaking. But breathing again.

I turned off the engine. Let the silence rush in.

What would it be like to fuck Jamie? To strip away all the bullshit and feel —him, me, the burn between us.

To pin him down, feel the fight in him, the surrender.

Or for him to flip the script, take control, drag every hidden nerve out of me.

That idea made my skin burn hotter than shame ever could .

I groaned and dropped my head to the wheel, leather cool against my forehead. This was ridiculous. Dangerous. I was Killian McKendrick, and I didn’t do distractions. I didn’t indulge.

But the thoughts didn’t fade. They lingered in my bloodstream, thick and hot and wrong in the best way.

I sat there for another long breath, then forced myself to head for my office, walking straight through and into the Cave. Caleb was at the wall removing pictures of Mitchell, Sonya next to him, taking the pins as he handed them to her.

“Leave that on there,” I said, and Caleb didn’t argue, pinning it back. “And I want Lassiter’s picture up front and center.”

Caleb frowned. “Federal Prosecutor Lassiter? You’re bumping him to the top of the list? He’s low-level.”

“Nope, top of the list. He and Marcus Kessler.”

The room fell into stunned silence. Caleb blinked as if he hadn’t heard right, and even Sonya froze with a pin halfway to the board.

“Kessler?” she repeated, her voice sharp with disbelief.

The name hit like a punch, the kind that made your gut clench and your mind reel.

For a moment, no one moved, the weight of it dragging the air down thick between us.

“ Billionaire, social media, owns half the world, Kessler?”

“Yep.”

“That’s gonna be difficult,” Caleb said. “Kessler, I mean.”

“I know. So, we go in hard on Lassiter and see what shakes out.”

“Are these the names you got from your meeting at Redcars?” Caleb asked, and he exchanged a confused glance with Sonya.

I didn’t question how Caleb knew where I’d been; I think he always knew where Levi, Sonya, and I were at all times. He probably knew I’d stopped at a freaking Blockbuster to have a meltdown.

“They were Mitchell’s ‘business associates’ that he reported to, and he would give them Robbie as a gift when they talked business.

They hurt Robbie; they nearly fucking killed him.

There’s more than just the money we took from Mitchell’s accounts; there are links to trafficking on files that Redcars are sending over.

” I regretted we hadn’t connected the dots way back on the only case I’d worked with him.

We’d been building a slow, deliberate case against Lassiter for over a year, but it was admin shit.

Contracts with too many loopholes. Real estate that didn’t line up.

Money redirected overseas. It all reeked of someone who knew how to stay within the lines.

Polished crime, buried under layers of legality and offshore accounts.

He was not the only one abusing power; he was just another in a long, ugly line.

But now, after what we’d learned, he wasn’t only another name.

And billionaire tech giant, Kessler, who hadn’t even been on our radar, was suddenly right up there beside him at the top of the list. He was a fortress—so wealthy, so deeply connected, he was nearly untouchable.

Despite his public image—cutting-edge space tech, next-gen fusion batteries, and a PR-friendly relationship with government leaders—he was someone we watched from afar.

Too big, too protected for our small unit to touch.

He had a private army of hackers wiping his trail, and he controlled a colossal server farm that funneled a chunk of the country’s internet traffic.

He was top of our wish list, but we’d need more to get anywhere near him.

Lassiter was our primary focus, and who knew, something might emerge from our actions regarding Lassiter that could provide more information on Kessler.

What Robbie remembered—the fragments he recited with that blank, clinical detachment—had rewired how I saw our one solo dealing with federal prosecutor Lassiter.

What I heard wasn’t that he was part of some white-collar scheme.

It was filth. Flesh. The list was endless, men buying boys, women auctioned off in back rooms. Debt paid in bruises.

Control bought with silence. Everything off-grid.

No emails. No bank transfers. All in Robbie’s head, run by Mitchell.

Nothing that could be traced, because it wasn’t meant to be seen —it was meant to be felt .

Pain instead of paper. That was how they kept it hidden.

“Files are coming in,” Caleb said, frowning at the screen. The fuck?” He peered closer, pausing one screen. “Okay, this… this is weird.”

“What is?” I asked, stepping closer.

“DaemonRaze. But that can’t be right.” He glanced up at me expectantly, as if I might know what he was talking about, and I waved for him to continue, with an added roll of my eyes.

“DaemonRaze was a gamer, a hacker, huge when I was getting started. One of the names people respected . Ethical hacks, leaks with purpose, whistleblowing-level shit. Then nothing for years. And now he’s back and working with some lowlife asshole like Mitchell?

That’s not the guy I remember. He had a code.

He gave a damn. I looked up to him—not like a hero or anything, given that we started doing our thing around the same time—but still… I expected better. ”

“Show me where his name is on this.”

“Hmmm,” Caleb muttered, eyes flicking across multiple screens as he opened and closed tabs with the kind of speed that looked like sleight of hand. Windows stacked, collapsed, reopened. Lines of code blurred past before he froze, sat back slowly, and stared.

“Oh wait. No. DaemonRaze’s code is embedded in files Mitchell had stashed on a deep server.

The name isn’t screaming from the metadata, but it’s here.

Shit…” He clicked some more. “This is sloppy work. This was taken from Mitchell, then rerouted through DaemonRaze’s systems to get to us.

Thank fuck he’s not turned to the dark side. ”

“It can’t have come from a hacker. Enzo said Jamie was sending these files using your encrypted software.”

“Nope,” Caleb popped the P. “They arrived directly, already encrypted. Oohh…” He sat forward. “Does this mean Jamie is DaemonRaze?”

“He can’t be. He was locked up for murder , not hacking, and he’s a mechanic. You keep saying how fast things change, so how would he have kept up when he was locked away?”

“True,” Caleb murmured. “But I’m adding it to my list of things to research. ”

Still, doubt itched at the back of my mind even as I said it.

He wasn’t like Rio or Enzo. Not only in the killing-people-without-blinking way; though, that was part of it.

There was something else. An edge. An intensity.

He didn’t look at me—he saw right through me.

Every movement in a room, every shift in body language.

When he wasn’t locked in that all-consuming need for revenge, there was a precision to him, as if his mind was constantly assessing threats.

“I’ll work it out,” Caleb said, fingers flying. Then he froze—completely. The blood drained from his face.

“No,” he whispered. A beat of silence. Then, he swore under his breath and shoved himself away from the desk as if the keyboard had burned him. “Have you seen what’s on here?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“What is it?” Sonya asked, stepping behind him. She stopped short, lifting her hand to her mouth as files began flashing across the screen, line after line, projected onto the wall. Then, the photos started. One after another.

“Killian…” she murmured. “Have you seen this…”

Image after image. Children. Women. Men.

Eyes blank. Faces hollow. No names—just numbers.

Shipping manifests. Dates. Routes. Ledgers of drugs and guns and flesh, detailed down to the last gram and heartbeat.

The weapons were bad. The drugs were worse.

But it was the people who stopped me. Each photo and file proved the kind of crime you didn’t come back from.

And it was all here. Neat. Documented. Organized.

I felt sick.

Sick to my soul. But turning away was wrong. I owed these people more than that; if I couldn’t save them, the least I could do was see them.

I pulled Robbie’s notebook from my coat and flipped through it with shaking fingers.

“I have this as well.” My voice came out rough.

His notes were frantic, raw. Some of the pages were barely legible, the ink smeared as if he’d been crying when he wrote.

One line had been underlined so many times the paper had torn.

I tore it out and dropped it next to Caleb, who was still frozen, pale and staring, his jaw locked as if he were trying not to be sick.

“This isn’t just blackmail, or money laundering, or dirt on powerful people,” I said. My throat was tight. “This is more than we thought. This is Hell.”

The board was filling up.

Strings of red, yellow, and black connected names, photos, and fragments of information, a spider’s web of decay stretching wider with every lead.

We didn’t have much on Kessler—according to Caleb, he was a ghost with a sealed financial portfolio and no digital footprint worth a damn.

We’d have to take him down the old-fashioned way, through Levi and his fellow cops.

However, we had more than enough on Lassiter to start examining his side hustles.

Enough to start pulling threads, digging into the shadows he operated in.

So that was where we started.

And from Lassiter, the rot spread fast.

We uncovered connections to shell companies, fake charities, real estate fronts, and offshore accounts that facilitated a complex web of money laundering.

But it wasn’t numbers and transactions. It was people .

We traced names from Lassiter to private security contractors, unlicensed clinics, and encrypted networks involved in trafficking more than weapons.

We followed his connections like blood trails, and the deeper we went, the clearer it became. We might not have had dirt on the billionaire, Kessler, but for Lassiter, we had trails running the gamut from trafficking to laundering to blackmail .

Lassiter. Friend of the undocumented, on the board of several charities. A smile hiding the devil inside.

The man now at the top of our list needed to be taken down.